


Poor Communication Kills

by INMH



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Bond is a troll and everyone knows it, Gen, General, Humor, Strong Language, poor communication skills
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 16:16:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6431428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or rather, it nearly kills Bond, and gives everyone around him about ten heart-attacks and endless paperwork.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Poor Communication Kills

“Turn left.”

“There is no _left_.”

“What the hell are you talking about; my readouts say that the road you’re traveling down has a turn-off on your left, which you’ve now _passed_ -”

“I’m not on a road.”

“Where are you, then?”

“I’ve turned down an alleyway.

A pause.

“Wait- What?”

“I said, I’m going down an alley-”

“ _Which_ side-alley?”

“It’s by a fish-shop.”

“Oh, for-”

A furious clacking in the background.

“What?”

“For fuck’s sake, Bond, you need to tell me these things, that alley leads right out to a-”

**_CRASH._ **

The motorcycle plowed through the fence, and Bond rode it all thirty feet into the ocean below.

Meanwhile, back at Q-Branch, Q covered his eyes and tried not to think about the money that had gone into that fucking bike.

 

[---]

 

“There were, of course, a few more insurgents than expected.”

“Oh, really?” It was never a good sign when Mallory started to get snarky. “How many is ‘a few’?”

Bond sniffed, rolled his eyes to the ceiling and mouthed the numbers as he counted.

“ _Bond_.”

“Something like… A hundred or so more?”

Combined with the original projection of how many insurgents would be involved in this particular coup, that put the number at about one-hundred thirty.

“And you didn’t think maybe that you should have _said_ something about that? Communicated it back to Tanner, or Q, or myself?”

“I handled it.”

Mallory gave him the Look, the one where he tilted his head to the side and widened his eyes in a way that communicated the depth of “are you fucking kidding me Bond” in a way that mere words could not.

“If an international incident is what you call ‘ _handling it_ ’,” Mallory said, incredulously, “then please, for the love of everything sacred, don’t ‘handle’ _anything_ ever again.”

“The insurgents were taken care of.”

“You blew up a building.”

“In fairness, it was _them_ that laid down the explosives, I just shot at them.”

“Ah, yes,” Mallory said, sarcasm painting his voice in a fine, even coat, “There were _‘a few’_ more explosives than you originally told us as well, weren’t there?”

Bond knew he was pushing it, but he couldn’t resist.

“Took care of those too, sir.”

“ _Out._ ”

 

[---]

 

Eve Moneypenny cut a splendid figure in the doorway, gun in one hand and her cell phone in the other, illuminating the way.

Bond spat out a bit of blood and wiggled against his restraints.

“I thought you weren’t doing field-work anymore.”

“And I thought _you_ were supposed to meet up with 004 in Nairobi.”

He shrugged awkwardly. “Plans changed.”

“You might have told us,” Moneypenny took her sweet time making her way over to the chair and tucking her gun in its holster. “Would have been a lot easier to find you before your new friends had a chance to play with you.”

“The game was getting a touch boring,” Bond admitted, flexing his newly-freed wrists. “I nearly fell asleep when they started in with that letter-opener.”

Moneypenny looked him over, eyes darkening somewhat. “They really did do a number on you. Why didn’t you say something in the beginning?”

Bond shrugged uncomfortably (partly because Moneypenny always got to him when she wanted to, and partly because that letter-opener had done some damage to his left shoulder). “I thought I could handle it.”

Moneypenny cocked an eyebrow at him, acknowledging the forever-unspoken ‘I guess I thought wrong.’ After a moment she said, “Well, I hope you’ve got enough in you to help me out with this, because there are quite a few more of your friends waiting for us outside.”

Bond considered for a moment. “Well, I may have a-”

“M has strictly forbidden the use of explosives.”

“Never mind, then.”

 

[---]

 

Tanner knew it was going to be bad when Mallory walked out of his office, rubbing his temples, and said “I’m going on lunch” about two hours before he usually took lunch. Any time he did this meant that a debriefing had gone poorly.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, that debriefing was Bond’s.

And now it was Tanner’s job to finish it.

“You did _what_?”

Bond blinked back at him with a feigned innocence that explained in a heartbeat why Mallory had thrown in the towel. The man hadn’t cracked under weeks of torture, but Bond had induced a migraine in him in under an hour.

“I drove the car into the building.”

“Yes,” Tanner said, unable to keep the edge from his tone, “But what I’m not quite sure of is how you managed to drive it through the window of the _fourth floor._ ”

“Ah, well, that’s a story- I may have neglected to mention that I ran into Felix Leiter-”

 _Oh **no**_. Some of Bond’s most headache-inducing stories involve that man.

“-and we may have gotten ahold of a cargo plane.”

Tanner felt himself pale a bit, and he delicately lifted a page of the file in front of him to look at the total damage costs.

…Christ. No wonder Mallory looked so grim.

Bond must have thought he was looking at the pictures of the nearly-leveled building-which, thank God, was a terrorist compound with no civilians inside (Bond was mad, not evil)- because he said, “I’d say Felix’s aim was pretty good, hm?”

Tanner gave him a dark look that (he hoped) suggested to Bond that he was about to let his less-than-bureaucratic side loose all over Bond’s face.

“Sign on the fucking line, Bond.”

 

[---]

 

“Apparently I have ‘poor communication skills’.”

“I thought the proper word for that was ‘British’.”

“At least our version of communication doesn’t involve dumping perfectly good tea into Boston harbor to prove a point.” Bond grunted into his drink, and Felix chuckled and slapped him on the shoulder.

“Boy, you guys are never gonna let that go, are you?”

“It was perfectly good tea, and you’re all bloody savages.”

“I’m a coffee man myself. So what’d you do this time?”

“Dunked a bike. Blew some things up. Got captured. That bit with the car in Amsterdam.”

Felix nodded, a slightly dreamy, satisfied grin covering his face. “Damn, but I have good aim.”

“That’s what _I_ said,” Bond replied, as though that had been the sole point of contention when it had been brought up. “In any case, M says he’s on the verge of putting me in a program.”

Felix snorted. “What, Aloof British Agents Anonymous? Not much in the way of curing what you’ve got. Besides, I don’t think it’s-” He stared across the bar for a moment. “Never mind. I thought our guy was moving.”

Bond turned to look over his shoulder, and did a double-take. “Felix, he’s _gone._ ”

Felix’s eyes widened in alarm. “What? He’s right there! He’s got the striped cap and everything!”

“That’s a _green_ cap, our man’s was blue. _Shit._ ”

“I take it back,” Felix said as he threw the money down on the bar, “Maybe you need that therapy after all.”

-End


End file.
